New Hampshire Primary Source covers breaking and behind-the-scenes news and analysis on the New Hampshire presidential primary and all things political in the Granite State. John DiStaso is the most experienced political writer in New Hampshire and has been writing a weekly column since 1982.

(Saturday, Feb. 6, update)

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DIRTY TRICKS? Canvassers purporting to be from Jeb Bush’s campaign went to the wrong home on Saturday afternoon, allegedly telling the homeowner that Carly Fiorina dropped out of the presidential race and asking that he consider supporting Bush.

Bush’s campaign says it had nothing to do with it.

The homeowner turned out to be Bob DeMaura, the father of Steve DeMaura, who is the executive director of the pro-Carly Fiorina super PAC Carly for America.

But obviously, the canvassers didn’t know who Bob DeMaura is. He is also the editor of the NH Insider web site, where he posted about the incident late Saturday afternoon.

Bob DeMaura confirmed his account in a telephone call with WMUR.com.“It’s a little bit of desperation, and a last-ditch effort to save a campaign,” DeMaura said.

“This was not our campaign,” Bush campaign spokesman Tim Miller said. “We have nothing but respect for Carly. We had nobody that fit this description knocking in Peterborough today, and even if we did, it would make no sense for our campaign to do this.”

Bob DeMaura posted that the “door knocker” was carrying Bush stickers and handouts, and, according to DeMaura, said that Fiorina’s exit from the presidential race had been reported in the media.

“I replied, ‘I know you are lying because I would have heard way before you. My son is the ED (executive director) of Carly for America! So get the hell out of here!’” DeMaura posted.

Fiorina spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores responded: "Nice try, Team Jeb. Carly is in this all the way. Real question is can you say the same after $100 million?"

The incident was first reported by Carl Cameron of Fox News.

(Earlier updates and the full Feb. 4 New Hampshire Primary Source follows.)

(Friday, Feb. 5 update)

100 FOR MARCO. Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida on Friday is announcing endorsements by 100 New Hampshire grassroots activists.

Included are Peter Angerhofer, a member of the board of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy; Sheridan Brown, a selectman in Grantham and a former staffer for former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu; Hillsborough County Attorney Dennis Hogan; former Grafton County Attorney Rick St. Hilaire; , Alicia Preston, a former staffer for former presidential candidate George Pataki; Sean Thomas, deputy chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta; Phil Hastings, Concord attorney and former state Republican Party executive director; and Maureen Barrows, former Rockingham County Commissioner and former John McCain campaign state vice chairwoman.

“Granite Staters know that Marco is the most qualified and well-positioned candidate to win in November and lead our nation,” Jim Merrill, Rubio campaign senior adviser, said. "We are th ankful for their support."

(Earlier updates and the full Feb. 4 New Hampshire Primary Source column follows.)

(Thursday, Feb. 4, update:)

MORE PRO-KASICH ROBOCALLS. It is not only Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s campaign that robocalled Granite Staters on the federal “do not call” list despite a state law disallowing it.

The separate super PAC backing Kasich did the same as recently as last weekend.

James Burke of Amherst, a supporter of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office after receiving pre-recorded political messages from the Kasich campaign last month.

On Thursday, he forwarded to the Attorney General’s Office a recorded message he received on his answering machine last weekend, from A New Day for America.

The voice in the message says, “We’re calling on behalf of John Kasich.”

It goes on to accuse Donald Trump of “double-talk” and praises Kasich. It contains the disclaimer that it was paid for by A New Day for America and “not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”

The Kasich campaign had maintained that its prerecorded messages were initiated by live callers and so, adviser and attorney Tom Rath said, they did not violate the ban on leaving prerecorded messages to those on the “do not call” list, and were legal.

On Monday, after Burke received the recorded message from A New Day for America, Attorney General Joe Foster issued a memorandum that gave no exception to prerecorded messages initiated by live callers. Assistant Attorney General Steve LaBonte said the office's review of Burke's complaint was continuing.

At that point, Rath said the Kasich campaign would abide by Foster’s interpretation and would make no new calls.

Burke said he has received no prerecorded political messages -- from any campaign or outside group -- since the Attorney General issued his memorandum on Monday.

A spokeswoman for A New Day for America said, "We have reviewed the opinion from the Attorney Ggeneral's office, and we have been and continue to be in compliance with New Hampshire's laws."

(The full Feb. 4 New Hampshire Primary Source column follows.)

CANDIDATE FALLOUT. With the final countdown to the leadoff presidential primary well underway, several Republican sources have told New Hampshire Primary Source that there is concern in high places of the party about the effect certain presidential candidates would have on down-ticket state races in November.

Sources say a pro-Republican group has completed a study predicting how U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte as well as a Republican candidate for governor and the rest of the ticket – down through the state House of Representatives – would fare under scenarios with each of the leading presidential candidates plugged in at the top of the ticket.

The findings, sources say, aren’t pretty if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz were the GOP nominee.

The study showed a Trump-led ticket, for instance, would lose Ayotte’s seat, the governor’s race, and majorities in the state Legislature. The Republican membership of the state House of Representatives would drop from the current 239 to about 150.

That would be, as one party insider put it, “devastating.”

The study was completed late last year and has been a subject of quiet discussion at the State House for about a month now.

Who did the study? That’s unclear at the moment, but several sources say it was by a legitimate pro-GOP conservative group that in 2014 accurately forecast that the Republicans would win about 240 New Hampshire House seats. They won 239.

BURLING GOES WITH CLINTON. Former state Sen. Peter Burling signed on early as former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s campaign as a state campaign co-chairman.

With O’Malley having ended his campaign after the Iowa caucus, Burling has quickly made a second choice, and it is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It's actually the first time Burling has backed Clinton. In 2008, he was a supporter of former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Burling, who is also a former Democratic National Committeeman and former New Hampshire House Democratic Leader – listed his reasons in a Facebook post.

Burling’s top reason for backing Clinton is that she was backed by his long-time friend, Martin Gross, a highly-respected attorney and former Concord mayor who died last week.

“Marty was always an amazing judge of a person’s character” Burling wrote. He wrote that she is supported by a group of Democratic women with whom he has worked for 30 years.

“Of the candidates now running in either party, Secretary Clinton is unquestionably the most qualified, without doubt. Her experiences in public life, as an advocate for ideas that I think are critical to the well-being of all Americans, have prepared her for the presidency.”

Burling also wrote that “we must choose a candidate for the top of the ticket who can and will help those further down ballot win their races. That person is Secretary Clinton.”

Burling, by the way, joins his wife, Jean, who has been a Clinton supporter all along. The Burlings live in Cornish, just across the river from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' home state.

END OF THE PRIMARY AS WE KNOW IT? A combination of factors led to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania exiting the presidential race, their top New Hampshire aides said Wednesday.

Paul aides, on a conference call, said the biggest factor was Donald Trump attracting an inordinate amount of media coverage. That led to Paul’s fundraising effort under-achieving, they said.

And the lack of money and lack of attention resulted in low poll numbers nationally and in New Hampshire and Iowa. And that, in turn, prompted Fox Business News to exclude Paul from the main stage of a Jan. 14 debate in South Carolina. Paul boycotted rather than be relegated to the under card event, but he was back on the main stage for Fox News debate last week, and received positive reviews.

But Paul would have been left out of the ABC News debate scheduled for Saturday night under the criteria set by the network, which will not have an undercard event. Paul finished fifth in the Iowa caucuses, with 4.5 percent of the vote.

Santorum was unable to gain traction at all campaign season,, after winning the 2012 Iowa caucus and finishing fourth in the New Hampshire primary that year.He did very little campaigning in New Hampshire in 2015, focusing on Iowa. Yet, he finished with just 1 percent of the vote in the caucus. He never got to the main stage, either.

“We need to have a discussion about how these national polls and debates are controlling the process,” Paul senior strategist Mike Biundo said. “That is something that weighed very heavy on me in giving advice to Sen. Paul on what to do.”

“We’re taking the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary and skewing them right now,” Biundo said. “The national party has something to bear on this as well by being part of dictating the terms of who’s a serious candidate and who’s not a serious candidate.”

Four years ago, Biundo advised the Santorum campaign with Manchester strategist Nick Pappas. While Biundo moved to Paul in the current camapign, Pappas stayed with Santorum for a second time.

And as WMUR.com reported late Wednesday night, Pappas has now signed on as a Trump supporter.

Pappas agreed that the debate rules were devastating to Santorum.

“He fought an uphill battle with a national media that refused to let Iowa and New Hampshire voters maintain their role in picking the parties’ nominees,” Pappas said.

Paul national strategist Doug Stafford said the “trajectory of the race was altered” by Trump, a “larger-than-life outsider who commanded so much of the attention and nearly non-stop news coverage, and a climate in which an overwhelming number of people on the stage were rushing to out-do themselves to see which of them could have a more rash foreign policy.”

Biundo and Stafford insisted, even after Paul dropped out, the Paul ground operation was the best in New Hampshire.

“A ground game can make up a lot of territory,” Stafford said. “But the amount of attention that was being given to other candidates on television, the fundraising advantage the other candidates had ... "

“When you combine a bunch of those factors, it didn’t look like the ground game was going to be able to overcome the numerous obstacles in our path.”

Meanwhile, we don’t expect the support that Paul did have in New Hampshire to move in a monolithic way to one or two candidates. One top supporter told us he expected it spread among U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and even Trump, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and – yes – a few may even go to U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

BOB IS CONFIDENT IN TED. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith isn’t buying the national media narrative that Ted Cruz has virtually no chance to win the New Hampshire primary.

“It’s true that many candidates have come to New Hampshire and flopped,” Smith, a Cruz co-chairman, told us at his candidate’s rally in Windham on Tuesday. “But this is different.”

“First of all, we have a hell of an organization on the ground. We have the same ingredients and structure here as the Iowa field organization. We identify our voters, we know who they are and we’re going to turn them out.”

Smith said that unlike 2012, there is no “legitimate, establishment frontrunner candidate, as we had in Mitt Romney. We’re now in a situation where somebody could come in on the inside rail with a plurality, and it’s going to be a conservative.”

QUICK TAKES:

NHCMP BACKS CRUZ. The 3,000-member New Hampshire Conservative Majority Project is endorsing Ted Cruz for president. In an announcement, Chairman Kevin McHugh praised Cruz’s conservative credentials and bashed Marco Rubio, saying that if he is elected, he would be “America’s Angela Merkel.”

RUBIO’S PACKED SCHEDULE. Marco Rubio continues barnstorming New Hampshire on Thursday with four town halls: at the Frank Jones Center in Portsmouth at 8 a.m.; Timberland in Stratham at 10:20 a.m.; the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at 12:30 p.m.; and the Mary A. Fisk Elementary School in Salem at 5 p.m. On Friday, he will hold a rally at the Hood Middle School in Derry at 5 p.m.

PRESTON JOINS RUBIO TEAM. Former Republican presidential candidate George Pataki backed Marco Rubio last week, and this week, the former New York governor's former top adviser in New Hampshire followed suit. Alicia Preston wrote on Facebook, “Time to unite behind a uniter.”

BIG WEEK FOR THE NHDP. It’s a big week for the state Democratic Party. After co-hosting the Wednesday night forum on CNN, the party will also co-host the Thursday night debate at the University of New Hampshire, on MSNBC. On Friday, the party will host what it is calling “the biggest fundraiser in New Hampshire history,” its McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester.

BASS BACKS SUNUNU. New Hampshire Primary Source has learned that former U.S. Rep. Charlie Bass will endorse Executive Councilor Chris Sununu’s bid for governor on Thursday morning. Bass says Sununu “is passionate about our traditions of frugality, local control and being able to live our lives with as much freedom from government as possible.”

Earlier this week, Bass waded into the presidential race, supporting his former U.S. House colleague, Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

GUINTA NAMED TO BUDGET COMMITTEE. U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta was named to the House Budget Committee this week. It was his second appointment to the panel. He served on the committee in the 112th Congress, from 2011-2012.

STILES BACKS CHRISTIE. As WMUR.com first reported on Wednesday, New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Jasper endorsed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Earlier this week, Christie was endorsed by state Sen. Nancy Stiles of Hampton, who formerly supported George Pataki. She became the third state senator to back Christie.

MOM WRITES FOR JEB. Landing in mailboxes statewide on Tuesday was a “letter” from Barbara Bush, calling her son “a strong leader and a proven leader.”

“I admit to being prejudiced,” Barbara Bush wrote. “I am his mother.”

CLOSE UP. A special, live hour-long “CloseUp” program will air on Sunday at 10 a.m. Host and political director Josh McElveen will discuss the Saturday night WMUR-ABC News debate and the primary with a variety of guests.